No Cover: Malachai

Monday, April 12, 2010

No Cover is a streaming audio series that presents New York concert recordings in their entirety. Listen to full-length shows from our partner venues Barbès and Zebulon, as well as other great spaces around the city.

The enigmatically named Gee and Scott, better known as Malachai, brought their fuzzed-out patchwork pop to Le Poisson Rouge in March. Stream the whole show for free right here.

Before You Press Play

Hometown: Bristol, UK

The Facts: With only the 30-second iTunes samples to go by, a casual listener might peg Malachai's Ugly Side of Love as a straight-up garage throwback -- a warning shot from a pair of seething proto-punkers, poised to unseat the art-school types ruling indie rock these days. That listener would be approximately half right: it's clear what these two Bristol blokes were slamming to in high school (critics often liken the duo to a living, breathing Nuggets jukebox), but they've got a funny way of showing their appreciation. Chopped, looped, bent and scratched samples abound, pilfered straight from the very 1960s pop and psych canon that informs their overall aesthetic. Live instruments aren't safe either; Gee and Scott's drum, guitar, piano and vocal tracks are filled with obvious edits and deliberate tape wobble, flaunting their origins in Bristol's hip hop scene.

The Sound: Two British crate-diggers who don't pay tribute to their influences so much as take them out and rough them up.

He Said, She Said: "Ransacking genres with an innovative twist, Ugly Side Of Love celebrates a world dying an avoidable man-made death, and is successful in aspiring to be one of the most complete albums you're likely to hear this year." -Huw Jones, DailyMusicGuide.com

"Signed to the label run by Geoff Barrow from Portishead, Bristolians Malachai mix Love-style garage psychedelia and trippy samples with modern production savvy. The result is catchy, off-kilter backdrops for vocals that are a clear tribute to Horace Andy. Think Mellow Gold-era Beck crossed with the Kinks." -Molloy Woodcraft, The Observer